One could imagine that the Gingko tree’s resurgence is a good story. It is one of very few species that have been “saved” from extinction by humans. About 250 years ago, Gingko was first catalogued by Western botanists. It was thought at the time that Gingko was confined to a small area of China. Gingkoes now live all over the world, planted in cities and towns across the globe. Gingkos are popular because they can survive harsh conditions. And their unusual leaves are very pretty–small fans that turn golden yellow in the fall. Gingko has other oddities, too. It is neither a flowering plant nor a conifer. It is a dioecious species, meaning individual trees are either male or female but Gingko has been known to partly switch genders for unknown reasons. Male Gingkos release motile sperm that the females receive on a drop of watery fluid on a special stalk at the base of their leaves. The females produce nuts, which when ripe, I am told, smell like human vomit. I have not, yet, personally experienced this special tree scent. Here in Toronto, many of the Gingkoes are male and are rumoured to be clones. While one can say humans have saved Gingko from extinction, one could also speculate that humans have manipulated Gingko, creating a monoculture from a single tree from a single species because it is useful to us. Outside the window of the studio, there is a row of male Gingkoes. They are magnificent, resplendent green with shimmering vivacious leaves. I wondered what it would be like to live next to your clone. In my movement exploration, I wondered what it would be like to move as the essence of a Gingko goddess. Audacious, I know. I used editing techniques to clone the goddesses. It is thought that Gingkoes have about 250 million years of experience as a species. The cloned dancers fade in and out of reality as I imagine the trees might move in and out of their past, present and future. The dancers join together in partial unison and individual expression in the same way the Gingkoes each move in their own way with the same breeze. While I question the selfishness of saving a species to harness it for our own human use, I am grateful for these trees outside the window—grateful for the profound aliveness they exude and the delight of dancing with them. Peter Crane, in his botanical biography of Gingko writes, “Trees, especially trees like gingko, which connect us to the deep history of our planet, ask us to reflect more often and think more carefully about all we will lose when the short view rules our world and everything in it.” (Crane, 2013, p.277).